One man's journey through his 50+ long boxes.
One issue at a time, completely at random.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Up next...Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.!

It's that time again, so let's start up the old Randomizer and get to it.

The next issue up for review is Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #23 published by Marvel Comics from May, 1991.

After a couple of near misses, the Randomizer has finally picked an issue drawn by Jackson "Butch" Guice. We just missed reviewing one of his issues on Ruse, and reviewed a Birds of Prey issue right before he took over, but this time it's all him. I suppose it was only a matter of time, as he was one of the first artists that I paid attention to who was actually drawing the book.

I followed him from Dr. Strange Sorcerer Supreme, to Deathlok, to Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., to Action Comics, to Resurrection Man, to Birds of Prey, to Ruse, and finally to Aquaman Sword of Atlantis.

I suppose you could say I'm a fan.

As for the actual book itself, I remember enjoying it, but gave up on the title once Guice left. I've picked up, and at least tried, almost every other Fury or S.H.I.E.L.D. relaunch in the intervening twenty years, but have continued to be a frustrated fan.

So frustrated was I, that back in the mid-90's I started plotting out the perfect Nick Fury story that I was going to write. If Marvel wasn't going to do right by Fury, I guess I was going to have to. There was a guy named Arcell, who worked with me at the video distributor where I worked at the time who could actually draw pretty well. We had a couple of planning sessions and he had half-a-dozen pages pencilled before he got sidetracked.

You see, there was this movie called Timecop starring Jean Claude Van Damme. When it came out on video (it may have actually been direct-to-video), the studio stopped by where we worked to do a little promotion. Arcell somehow managed to get one of the studio representatives to look at "our" proposal for a Timecop comic book. So Nick Fury was out and Jean Claude Van Damme was in. Yea!

Mercifully, I only had to suffer for a week and a half trying to find something interesting about a Van Damme franchise to write about. Ford Motor Co. had finally offered Arcell a job that he had applied for the year before, and he was gone.

But that's enough about me and my personal vendetta against JCVD for ruining my dreams of comic boook stardom. Check back in a day or so, and we'll see how this old Nick Fury book holds up.